How have fairytales changed over time and how does this affect the children that read them?

How have fairytales changed over time and how does this affect the children that read them?

We all know that fairytales have changed alot over time and have been sanitized, but how do these sanitized version affect children? Is it better for these children to read the disney versions of the fairytales or would they learn more from the original versions? Share your opinions I'm very familiar with fairytales like Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella, but if you think any other fairytale has changed greatly over time and you know the reasons why then let me know

I've a book Grimm's Fairy Tales from Barnes & Noble Classics with about half the Grimm tales put into it and in the intro it says the tales were edited because they were not child friendly. Elizabeth Dalton [2003] says in it that, "the tales have been criticized ever since they first appeared as inappropriate for children - too frank about sex, too violent, too dark." [p xv]. She says that the first edition of the tales "was intended primarily for adults and for other scholars." [p. xviii] at a time when there was no unified German state and it was culturally significant to find "an authentic German literary and linguistic identity" [p. xviii]. Later Dalton says "As the tales became popular with children , parents complained about references to sex and other bodily functions." [p. xxi] and quotes how the Grimms edited the stories even though in the 2nd edition they talked about not holding back on anything. Dalton then gives examples of the editing where "the donkey in 'The Table, the Ass, and the Stick' emits gold from both ends , but later the gold comes only out of its mouth. In the first edition, after her nightly frolics with the prince, Rapunzel notices that her clothes are getting tighter; later editions delete any reference to this suspicious weight gain." [p. xxi].

Of course the incestuous, sexual, violent Greek myths get censored for kids all the time. So do Bible stories, for that matter. Sleeping Beaty and Tam and Cam sometimes share a second part to the story, where the stepmother kills the heroine and she comes back as a bird and tree. That one was a big surprise for young me.

I think a more modern issue is rewriting these into "Miss Ali Baba" or Cinder-boy to make things feel balanced. One thing that's gotten pruned out of the stories is the more active, intelligent, butt-kicking heroines. We've lost Molly Whuppie and only kept Jack and the Beanstalk ,and now writers are making up Jackie and the Beanstalk to compensate. Ditto with multicultural tales. What a tangle.

The problem (per does it affect kids) is that creating Jackie and the Beanstalk suggests that there never was a strong female equivalent retold for hundreds of years. It suggests to kids that the only girl stories are artifical and have to be created today. (As you might guess, this is the big obsessive issue for me and my new book).

Good luck.

Author of From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine's Journey in Myth and Legend

Discovering the second half of Sleeping Beauty was a real eye-opener for me as well, though I was into my early twenties when I finally read it - having only ever known the short version, it was just bizare to find this new, cannabilistic second half.

You raise some good points about the concept of modern 'gender reversed' fairy tales, Valeriefrankel - some of which where part of what inspired me to start a thread about legitimate, classic fairy tale variants that can be seen as being gender reversed versions of other tales.

Picking up on Universal123's question about the reasons why some fairy tales have changed greatly over time - not only does censoring play a role, but just plain streamlining of the narrative comes into play when it comes to retellings of the stories. The 'rule of three' works great, but that sort of repition can be a very easy target for the cutting room floor when it comes to retelling a tale. Cinderella only has to go to one ball rather than three, the evil stepmother only plays the 'old peddler woman' routine once. I don't know how relevent that is to what Universal123 is looking for, but it certainly is something that has affected fairy tale retllings.

I think the "sanitized" versions can be just as harmful as the violent, sexual stories they replaced, since so many of them have embedded misogyny and racism which hasn't been removed. Ultimately kids are going to absorb that stuff from the culture though, so I'll probably sanitize them fairly heavily when my (at this point completely theoretical) kids are very young, and then expose them to different versions (with discussions of how they've changed) as it seems age appropriate.

valeriefrankel wrote:Sleeping Beaty and Tam and Cam sometimes share a second part to the story, where the stepmother kills the heroine and she comes back as a bird and tree. That one was a big surprise for young me.

That's really interesting - I've not read that version, and finished a (what I thought was) original faux-fairytale that ends with the characters being transformed into birds (the men) and trees (the women).

I think that fairy tales have changed dramatically over time, especially with the Brothers Grimm Tales. Many of the Brothers Grimm Tales were quite violent and disturbing (especially since many tales dealt with cannibalism), but most of them were sanitized over the years. Some examples included the original tale of "Cinderella" where the stepsisters actually cut off their heels in order to be able to fit their feet into the glass slipper and then at end of the story, their eyes were pecked out by birds as punishment. Also, there was a story called "The Juniper Tree" where the stepmother ended up chopping a little boy's body to pieces and made a stew out of his body and fed it to the boy's father (gruesome, I know). So, in many fairy tales of today, you don't see a lot of violence to the tales and they are more politically correct nowadays.

Stories will change over time because the people who tell the stories change. I don't think it is either good or bad--it depends on motive and the results. And these days many of us are writing new versions of fairy tales that aren't about politics or gender, but just about imagination. I would mostly like people to be more educated on the stories they think they know. Too many people think Disney versions are the "real" versions.

Many fairy stories have changed throughout time. For example Giambattista Basile's 'Sun, Moon & Talia' is one of the oldest literary versions of Sleeping Beauty and in that Talia (Sleeping Beauty) does not prick her finger on a spindle nor does Prince Charming save her. Instead a King passes by and rapes her and leaves her with two children. After which she is nearly thrown into the fire by the evil ogress Queen. These tales were never originally meant for children. Perrault etc were ironic and subversive tales commenting upon the aristocratic gossip of the Parisian salons.

I think that children can learn more from the older tales than what Disney horrificly did to tales, especially young girls, who must watch Disney and believe that they need to be passive girls and wait for the hero to save them.

This focus on fairy tales is something I myself study and question as part of my practice. Disney and new re-tellings of fairy tales are bland and stripped of their morals. In my past research, I found many parents are reluctant to show children the darker, more older stories so as to not scare them, yet what I find incredibly frustrating is that children are allowed to use social networking, watch inappropriate films/tv, play computer games that encourage killing and crime and so on. Obviously, we cannot wrap children up in a shroud of innocence to protect them from the world's dangers, they do need to learn about it, but carefully so. I strongly feel stories are a fantastic way of doing so, but sadly today's aren't being used to this advantage.

I do feel the older stories can be a little alarming i.e cannibalism, amputation etc, however, children seem to love all that!! I remember reading the old Ladybird books when I was younger, the art work sometimes used to terrify me yet I was entranced by them - Rumpelstiltskin was particularly chilling *_*

On fairy tales that have changed/been washed down, Hansel and Gretel is another, I'm sure one of the original tellings was that the witch (may have been the devil!) built a sawhorse and planned to kill H&G on it, but they pretended not to know how to climb onto it so the witch/devil demonstrates and they children kill her/him on it.

I strongly recommend Maria Tatar's 'Off With Their Heads!" which has a lot to do with this sort of stuff! Also Marina Warner if you want the history, origins and other meanings/endings of fairy tales